


echoes of the shots ring out

by MYuzuki



Series: No matter what’s in front of me (I’ll keep fighting til I’ve won) [4]
Category: Final Fantasy XV, Kingsglaive
Genre: Betrayal, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Luche tries to kill Nyx and it backfires spectacularly, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:00:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26178391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MYuzuki/pseuds/MYuzuki
Summary: The bullet hits him in the shoulder.
Relationships: Luche Lazarus & Nyx Ulric
Series: No matter what’s in front of me (I’ll keep fighting til I’ve won) [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1897525
Comments: 9
Kudos: 149





	echoes of the shots ring out

**echoes of the shots ring out**

* * *

The bullet hits him in the shoulder.

Nyx is pretty sure it was meant to get him straight through the heart, but he'd caught a glimpse of the muzzle flash just before the shot had cracked through the still air of the deserted highway and had swerved his borrowed motorcycle _just enough_ to avoid a kill-shot.

Getting shot still hurts like a motherfucker, though, the bullet tearing through muscle and flesh even as the sheer momentum of the shot sends him crashing down onto the asphalt as the motorcycle goes skidding away.

But being painfully wounded is still preferable to being dead (again), and he reminds himself to buy Crowe a fruit basket or something to thank her (or perhaps a new set of throwing knives, which she would likely prefer over fruit).

Because he'd known that he was going to be ambushed on this trip, but thanks to Crowe's emergency text about Luche being sent out on a special errand by their commander (a special errand that required a long-distance rifle, no less) Nyx had known _when_ to be ready, had known _what specifically_ to be alert for.

So he'd been waiting for a glint of lens flare or the spark of a muzzle flash, and he'd reacted on instinct when the moment had finally come.

Now, he doesn't even take the time to staunch the flow of blood from the gunshot wound before he's up off the ground and _moving_. He summons a kukri and flings it with all his might in the direction the shot had come from, warping after it with a flicker of thought.

He has a split second to savor the Oh Shit expression on Luche Lazarus's face before he slams into the other man, tackling him off the rock outcropping he'd been using as a vantage point. They go tumbling across the uneven ground, Luche cursing up a storm as he tries to bring the rifle up and around to get off another shot.

Nyx doesn't give him a chance; he stabs Lazarus in the thigh and takes advantage of his enemy's distraction to rip the gun from his hands and hurl it away, out of reach. Luche tries to warp, then, to get away and flee, but Nyx snatches onto the other man with a barely suppressed snarl before he can disappear, yanking him back down onto the ground and pinning him in place.

"Enough already," Nyx snaps, shoving Luche's face into the dirt with perhaps a tad more force than is strictly necessary. "You're not getting away from me, asshole, so you might as well stop trying."

Luche sputters indignantly, hurling out vile curses that might make Nyx laugh appreciatively in another set of circumstances.

He's not laughing now.

Because he's looking down at Luche Lazarus, and all he can think is _traitor, traitor, traitor_. All he can see is a trusted comrade turning on him, too bitter and ambitious to realize he was walking a dead-end road paved with the Empire's lies.

He looks at Luche, and he sees Crowe's cold and rotting corpse. Sees the bodies of all the other Glaives that had died because they'd believed Luche's lies and Drautos's false promises. Sees the King dead and Insomnia nothing more than a hollowed out shell of its former glory.

Sees the final sunrise, _his_ final sunrise, that had crested over the horizon as his body had crumbled into dust.

None of it has happened yet, not for anyone else, but it's still real for Nyx. Still a grim specter of _what if_ hovering above his shoulders at all times, the future he'd lived through and is trying so desperately to prevent.

It burns under his skin, the need to make things _right_ , to fix what had gone so terribly wrong. And he knows he can't fix absolutely everything, not by himself; he's only one mortal man, after all, for all that he'd done the impossible and wielded the power of the Lucii without a drop of royal blood in his veins.

But this…this is a good start, he thinks. Because he's not dead, Crowe's not dead, and he has Luche in custody. He has Luche in custody _after trying to assassinate a fellow Glaive_ , and it occurs to Nyx that maybe this is what he can use to get other people pointed in the right direction. Because he'd dropped hints to Crowe about potential spies and nudged her in the general vicinity of the truth, but _this_? Not only is trying to kill a comrade-in-arms indisputably attempted murder, it could probably be considered treason given the unique set of circumstances.

And if he can get Luche to confess? To spill the beans on Drautos, on how their commander had tasked one Glaive to kill another and _why_?

Well. It would be a mess, certainly, but it might be exactly the sort of chaos he needs to avert disaster.

Because if he exposes Drautos as the lying backstabbing traitor that he is, then Niflheim loses their ace in the hole for bringing Insomnia to its knees from the inside. They'll have a back-up plan, of course, but if they lose Drautos, lose _Glauca_? Their most powerful general?

It might, _maybe_ , be enough to make them pull back for the time-being, make them reassess the situation and look for another angle.

Because without Glauca on the inside, killing Regis and causing the fall of the Wall, the Niflheim invasion force would never be able to destroy Insomnia, would never be able to even get _close_.

It would cause the ceasefire to evaporate, of course, but since it's all fake anyway Nyx can't find it in himself to be too terribly bothered by that. Because the ceasefire is just another of the Empire's ploys to seize power for themselves, a smokescreen they'd used to disguise their true plan, and Nyx is very much looking forward to burning those plans to the ground.

So he looks down at Luche Lazarus and gives a grin that's more a baring of teeth than anything. "So, Luche," he says, cheerful with an edge of deadly warning, "let's talk about why you just tried to kill me."


End file.
